Plain Jane Knits Up A Storm

A few musings about my needlecraft hobbies - knitting, crocheting, quilting, & cross-stitch along with my other love, genealogy. While growing up, I used to HATE the term "Plain Jane", but when it comes to knitting & crocheting, I've realized that I really *am* a Plain Jane in that I don't use fancy yarns.

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Location: Northern Detroit Metro area, Michigan, United States

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Thursday Already??

Yup! It sure is.. so it's time for the book question of the week:

Paper or Plastic:
Do you read e-Books?
If so, how? On your computer, or a PDA?
Or are you a paper purist? Why?


This one is a toss up. Reading for pleasure? That definitely paper, normally hard-bound books from the library. Reading for information? That type of reading is often on the computer as I Google my way though various sites and take advantage of the on-line access to Heritage Quest's genealogy library. I'd be interested in finding out more about e-books because the library is supposed to have a selection that's downloadable from home, but to date I haven't looked into it very seriously.

It's been a busy week. The garden is planted as of Tuesday - all 36 tomato plants (ok, I got a bit carried away at the green house and didn't really realize that I had that many until DH was digging holes for them with the post hole digger and I had to keep asking for more - more holes, I say!) Basil wasn't available this year in the 4-packs like last, so I bought three 2½" pots instead with about 6 plants in each clump. I'm hoping that they do well enough that we can double our production of pesto this summer. The stash in the freezer from last summer is almost gone but it's been an occasional welcome reminder of summer in the depths of this last winter.

Tuesday was also the day that my Amazon order showed up - Barbara Walker's First Knitting Treasury, Knitting In The Old Way, & Folk Vests. I was a little disappointed in the Treasury as I hadn't seen it before and from the cover I was hoping for all lace patterns. The lace section is nice but only a small part of the book with textured stitches, color work, cables, and other types making up the majority of the pages. I did discover that over the last few weeks of working lace designs into the K4 shawls I made a break-through on reading charts so that the all text directions in the Treasury seemed strange. Knitting In The Old Way has been updated from the book I borrowed years ago from the library - lots more information on how to design sweaters in various ethnic styles. The Folk Vests book is a standard knitting pattern book with some very nice designs - I'm especially interested in making the Chinese vest.

Yesterday, DH tried to add a sound card to this computer. Ok, I know I'm probably one of the very few people in the world with a dead silent computer, but when I bought this one it was strictly for doing a little moonlighting in printed circuit design here at home and a sound card seemed like something that I wouldn't need. Fast forward seven years.. I'm retired and the computer is used mainly for blogging, web wandering & working on my genealogy page - none of which require the concentration that the design work did - so having some music playing or being able to follow some of the on line pod-casts would be nice. Suffice it to say, that with the sound card in place the computer wouldn't boot because of some sort of conflict. Take the card out and it still wouldn't boot - "cannot find operating system".. AARRGGGG.. After a few tries, it did magically resuscitate itself but the tech with the sound card company ventured that the problem might be that the hard drive is going. Double AARRGGGG.. DH hooked up a CD-ROM burner we found a couple weeks ago at a garage sale and I've backed up most of the drives - at least the important stuff. Everything seems to be running smoothly if still dead silent, but it was a slightly nerve wracking day.

Today was garage sales - two huge subdivisions full of open garages.. Lots of walking, looking and bargaining. I found a few books for the grandchildren, but that was about it. It was awfully hot out with only a trace of a breeze. High 80s day after day this time of year are a bit unusual.

We got home about noon which gave me time to cool off and relax a bit before heading for the weekly K4 meeting. We had an almost full group today. Four of my knitting students were there and making great progress. Frances hasn't been there for a few weeks but she brought in five crocheted afghans! Gloria is starting a darling child's hat. Sharon is working on a crocheted afghan that is turning some variegated yarn that the rest of us avoided into something beautiful. And Jean is knitting a vest in a pale pink. It's so much fun to watch these friends enjoy knitting & crocheting. No photos today as I only completed one K4 shawl and the yarn ends still need to be run in before taking a photo. I have two other shawls started - I'm almost to the point on one where I have to decide which lace pattern to put in before the border so I started the second one at the meeting today - something easy that I could put down without losing my place when someone needed help. I have another rag-tag afghan about half done but with Boomer looking for more lap time in the evening while I'm watching TV, I haven't been working on it as steadily as usual.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Nana Sadie said...

busy busy busy....
:)
fingers crossed that the computer stays together..
(((hugs)))

9:59 AM  

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